Guardian “As-an-Israeli”, Aluf Benn, fumes at his country’s narrow concerns over their own safety

Aluf Benn

Adam Levick
CiF Watch
25 March '11

Aluf Benn is angry with Israel.

Benn is angry with his country over their myopia and narrow self-interest in responding to the Arab revolutions.

How angry is he with his fellow countrymen? Well, he’s at least angry enough at Israel to give him a platform at the Guardian to express his disgust.

Indeed, as Ha’aretz circulation continues to dwindle to minuscule numbers – indicating that an increasing number of Israelis no longer take their fanciful pseudo-intellectual musings seriously – we likely can expect their enfeebled political analyses to appear more often on the pages of ‘Comment is Free’.

In “Israel is blind to the Arab revolution“, CiF March 23, Aluf Benn, the Ha’aretz editor-at-large, displays an impressive ability to avoid allowing stubborn, undeniable political realities to get in the way of his puerile idealism.

Benn lectures Israeli leaders who don’t possess his sophisticated political imagination and “can not see beyond the recent escalation across the Gaza border“, and have not “reached out to the [Arab] revolutionaries, celebrating their achievement or suggesting we need to know them better…”.

Benn then diagnoses our political myopia:

“there’s a deeper motive underlying the Israeli attitude. They see their country as a western bastion, a modern democracy that is unfortunately surrounded by less developed nations.”

Is he implying that Israel’s political exceptionalism in the region is even debatable?

Ben then digs deeper at the roots of Israeli ethnocentrism:

(Read full "Guardian “As-an-Israeli”, Aluf Benn, fumes at his country’s narrow concerns over their own safety")

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